Brent Jones, Real Estate Sales Representative – RE/MAX Niagara Realty Ltd., Brokerage – Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada
I’ll be the first to admit that, with more than 1,000 active realtors in Niagara Region, you could throw a rock in just about any direction and hit one of us.
So, if you’re thinking of selling your home, why should you choose me, Brent Jones, to list it?
In this short article, I intend to answer that very question for you.
Earlier this week, I met with a potential seller client to discuss listing his home for sale.
We had a conversation about commission and it went a little something like this:
Seller: What’s your fee?
Me: Six percent, if I thought your home would be difficult to sell. But, since I’m pretty confident I can sell your home relatively fast, I’ll only take five percent.
Seller: Five? (taps his fingers on the kitchen table, thinking) So, if you sell my house for $400,000, you get $20,000?
Me: I don’t get to keep all of it, but you’ve got the right idea.
Seller: That seems a bit…steep. Can you do any better, Brent?
Any better? Part of me wanted to reply with, “Better? Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea what selling your home involves?”
But, of course, I was polite. I simply grabbed a pen and paper and began to break down for him exactly what a typical real estate transaction (in my market) looks like.Continue Reading
It almost goes without saying that, when viewing a property of any age or condition, a home inspection is an excellent idea.
This will help to uncover latent defects — the type of defects that may not be obvious based on a cursory glance, especially to an untrained eye.
The cost of having a home inspection done — often between $300 and $500 — pales in comparison to the cost of repairing a cracked, sinking foundation, or gutting the house to replace old knob and tube wiring.
For the purposes of this post, however, I want to address what are referred to as patent defects. In other words, defects anyone could see with an untrained eye, but might not.
